‘The Fine Art of Paper Flowers’ Is a Recipe Book for Crafting Your Own Gorgeous Blooms

I know that just last week I start­ed the series Around the World, and I had all inten­tions to con­tin­ue it today. But, I got a lit­tle dis­tract­ed when Tiffanie Turn­er’s The Fine Art of Paper Flow­ers arrived in the mail. I love mak­ing faux flowers—last Hal­loween, I made a whole bunch of them for my cos­tume—but I had­n’t tried mak­ing paper flow­ers before. I was eager to give one of her tuto­ri­als a try.

This book is like a cook­book for craft­ing a vari­ety of gor­geous paper flow­ers, com­plete with beau­ti­ful botan­i­cal pho­tog­ra­phy and a recipe-like approach to writ­ing. As I thumbed through the pages, I saw many that I’d like to make… even­tu­al­ly. For now, I tried mak­ing Benary’s Giant Zin­nia. It used four dif­fer­ent col­ors of crepe paper as well as oth­er mate­ri­als like scis­sors, Tacky glue, hot glue, and flo­ral tape.

I had a lot of fun try­ing to recre­ate Tiffanie’s ver­sion of a Giant Zin­nia. It was also chal­leng­ing! I’ve nev­er used crepe paper before, and it’s real­ly interesting—it’s del­i­cate, but also resilient. You can bend or stretch it with­out it tear­ing. A lot of Tiffanie’s direc­tions includ­ed manip­u­lat­ing the paper in some form. The cen­ter of the flower,  for instance, involved me twist­ing the paper into small points.

If you’re new to paper flow­ers, the book does a great job of intro­duc­ing you mate­ri­als and tech­niques that are used in the DIYs. There are a lot of detailed instruc­tions, but they’re writ­ten in a way that’s acces­si­ble and descrip­tive. It’d be impos­si­ble to pho­to­graph every lit­tle that thing you have to do, but Tiffanie made it easy to under­stand how to move from step to step.

For my first time attempt­ing a paper flower, I think I did okay. Hav­ing all the prop­er sup­plies would’ve helped (I had the right crepe paper, but my flo­ral wire was too thin), so the next time I attempt anoth­er bloom, I’ll be sure to have every­thing avail­able. Luck­i­ly, Tiffanie lists some of the places she used to make her own flow­ers (includ­ing Etsy), so that gives me a good start­ing point.

I’m look­ing for­ward to fill­ing my home with these paper flowers—the crepe paper makes them look decep­tive­ly life-like… with­out the even­tu­al wilting!

The Fine Art of Paper Flow­ers is now avail­able on Ama­zon.

Looking for a fun and challenging DIY project? The Fine Art of Paper Flowers by Tiffanie Turner offers a variety of gorgeous paper flowers you can make yourself.